


The Revenant Coffee Company

by Lisbetadair



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Goths, M/M, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24355384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisbetadair/pseuds/Lisbetadair
Summary: MacTavish has always been a tea person, but an accidental excursion into Hereford's hip new coffee shop might change his mind about a lot of things.
Relationships: John "Soap" MacTavish/Simon "Ghost" Riley
Comments: 28
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

MacTavish could not go on. With each step more pain lanced through his already aching thigh until finally, the knee buckled and gave way. He caught himself just in time, breathing hard through gritted teeth. _Take it easy, she said, but no! You knew better!_ He winced as he shifted his weight to lean more nonchalantly against the wall, trying to give the appearance that he slouched there for some reason other than the fact he could hardly bear his own weight. 

_Well, this turned out to be a great idea!_ The voice of his conscience taunted. The physios had been clear about timescales, and goals of recovery: it would be months before he was close to starting training again. _But you thought: what the fuck do they know?_ He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push the throbbing agony away. It didn't help.

Whatever the mocking voice in his head said, he knew that he _had_ to go out, or go insane. Every unoccupied moment was space for his thoughts to cloud, for the memories to rise up and surprise him with their horrific clarity. Two months, and the events of the bridge were as fresh as yesterday. He’d thought getting out of the hospital would make it better, get back to familiar surroundings, but it was worse. After spending the last three days indoors, limping from room to room, working his way through his meagre collection of DVDs and rotting his brains watching daytime television he knew he had to do something new, or he’d lose his mind.

So when he finished the last dregs of the milk, he decided he had to go shopping for himself. The thought of phoning for help filled him with disgust, and he couldn't bear it. Not that the volunteer assortment of bored wives, retired veterans and hangers-on weren’t _helpful_ , he considered, but there was only so much patronising benevolence that he could stomach in one week and the three hour car journey back from rehab had nearly tipped him over the edge already.

He’d managed to get as far as the top of the road before the pain really hit him, and he’d had to rest on the bench outside the supermarket before it subsided enough to allow him to eventually lever himself upright and limp inside. By the time he was at the checkout it merely hurt like hell, and halfway back along the road, it was _agony_. 

_You fucking idiot_. He berated himself. If he’d brought the stick he might have made it, he considered, but he’d been too proud to be seen with it, terrified of judgement, of being written off by a passing member of the brass. He was angry at his own arrogance, but furious at the state he was in: barely able to make it up the road without assistance, puffing and panting his way around the supermarket and clinging to a trolley for support like some decrepit old man.

He glanced round, hoping for a bench, or a bollard to perch on, somewhere to rest and take a breather, but no respite offered itself. He was about to give in and just commit to shelling out for a taxi to get the remaining few hundred yards when he saw two women exit a shop a few yards ahead, holding cups of coffee and laughing. 

He thought back, and now that he remembered, he’d seen it in passing the first time: some hip new place that had sprouted in his long absence, with a grim, austere frontage dolled up like some Victorian funeral parlour. He’d regarded it with indignation, the creeping cancer of gentrification spreading out from the centre of the town, squeezing out the old greasy spoons. He liked those old cafes, with their thick china mugs of tea stewed so long you could tar roofs with it, cracked formica tables, ready supply of grease-coated delicacies and cheap to boot.

He tried to put weight on his bad leg, and was rewarded with a just bearable stab of pain like a knife being driven into his thigh. He sighed, gritting his teeth. _Well, beggars can’t be choosers_ , he thought, and lurched off towards the door.

  
  
  


A bell tinkled as he entered. The place was empty, but behind the counter, a tall white man, with a floppy mop of auburn hair and matching, neat, close-trimmed beard, fussed over the displays. He looked up at the noise and grinned. “All right, squire?”

MacTavish was in too much pain to reply, so he made a non-committal grunt and sat down heavily at the nearest table. 

“You okay mate?” The man stared at him, a concerned frown distorting his face.

“Aye... Just my leg’s playing up.” MacTavish replied dismissively. He didn’t want the humiliating concern of strangers on top of everything else. “I’ll have a coffee.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Just as it comes is fine.” 

“No problem.”

He busied himself with the coffee machine, a behemoth of black and chrome that made a furious, infernal noise as he worked, like some monstrous ancient steam engine. He towered over it, tall but broad in the shoulders and thick in the forearms. As he moved a soft curl of dark red hair flopped onto his forehead. The man glanced up and caught him looking. MacTavish dropped his curious gaze, embarrassed and just a little bit pissed off. In comparison, he knew _he_ looked like shit: his old clothes baggy where they’d once strained to fit, the bristle of yesterday still unshaven from his gaunt face, and his hair hanging untrimmed in a wild mess around his ears.

He furtively glanced around the room instead. The place was... _odd_ , he realised. Inside, the walls were a soft, creamy white, in contrast to the sombre, funeric theme of the shop front, but there was a shelf of plants in macabre skull-shaped pots, and high above, perched on a denuded branch, a small flock of stuffed ravens regarded him with beady, suspicious eyes. Between them, a selection of animal skulls with looping horns spotted the wall behind the counter. _Weird_ , he thought. 

The man appeared with his coffee, and set it down on the table wordlessly. This close, MacTavish could make out the florid tattoos covering his forearms. Clearly, he had an inclination to the gothic, with pride of place given over to a dancing skeleton surrounded by a border of bones and hourglasses. MacTavish remembered goths as a teenager, and wondered if this was just what happened to them when they grew up and bought a gym membership: suddenly shedding their black, velvet cocoons, getting their hair cut and reinventing themselves as handsome, skull-adorned mature adults.

He realised that he was staring blankly, and shook himself “Er… How long has this place been here?” he asked. He wasn’t really interested, but he realised that between his bedraggled appearance and curious stares, he came across like a complete weirdo. Besides, there was no music, and it was either try small talk, or stare into the empty eye sockets of the probable sheep’s skull on the opposite wall until he finished his drink in oppressive silence.

The man grinned at him. “About nine months now, give or take.” He said, and MacTavish thought he could detect more than a faint hint of pride in his Estuary accent. He considered how funny that was, both of them strangers, hundreds of miles away from where they’d started, had ended up here, teetering on the Welsh borders in this ancient town.

MacTavish nodded, and the man turned to walk away. He took a sip of the coffee and smacked his lips with surprise. Unlike the gritty, watery drivel they served in the mess, this had flavour. It tasted smooth, with a perfect balance of the sweet and the bitter.

“Hey, this is... _good_.” he said. 

“I’ll say thanks, but with a little disappointment at the surprised tone.” The man smiled wryly.

“Well... it’s usually just instant for me.” MacTavish explained, awkwardly “I’m more of a tea person really.”

“It’s a custom blend” the man explained, brightly “About a sixty-forty split between Columbia and Sumatran, and I do the roast and grind myself. You can buy a bag to take home if you like.” He waved at the black paper sacks on the counter. MacTavish could just make out “Revenant Coffee” stenciled on the front, and noted the little skull logo at the bottom with no surprise at all.

The man went on, and MacTavish, for want of anything better to do whilst he sat there, listened to a potted critique of coffee plantations whilst a couple of customers came and went.

“Looks like you’re doing well then?” He observed.

“Yeah. Breaking even for the last three months. Got a couple of regular deliveries about the town, supply a few hotels and restaurants with the coffee and then it’s generally busy most days. Except for right now, obviously. It’ll perk up in about an hour with the lunch crowd. You new in town then?”

MacTavish shook his head. “I’m just back actually. Been away for a few months, and then I’ve been in hospital.”

“Oh? Hope it’s nothing too serious?”

He didn’t know why he said he’d been in hospital. He’d been avoiding talking to everyone about the experience of waking up in the draughty, squalid custody of the Russian loyalist field medics. He usually hated talking to strangers full stop, but there was something in the man’s manner, in his easygoing smile that just caused one word to lead to another. 

“Uh… Shrapnel... mostly.” he said, trying to push back the horrors of his fever-soaked eventual medevac and grim internment in intensive care.

“Shrapnel? One of that lot then?” 

“Aye.” MacTavish replied, and the man gave him that funny look that people sometimes did as they connected up the relevant pop culture moments they associated with the Regiment, to him, sitting there, trying to work out if he was telling the truth. MacTavish figured that right now, in his current dishevelled state, he wouldn’t blame this man for labelling him as another wannabe fantasist. He decided to change the subject. “So… what brought you out here?” He asked. 

“Used to be a hedge-fund trader, back in the city, but when they had a big merger, and voluntary redundancy pay was brought up I decided to jack it in.” The man explained with a shrug. “I’d been thinking about it for a while, getting out of the rat race. I came up here on holiday about a year ago and just never left.”

MacTavish considered this, trying to imagine the laid-back man in front of him yelling orders on the floor of the stock exchange, the tattoos concealed under a bland, corporate suit. He couldn’t picture it.

“And I found out my other half was shagging my best mate, so that kind of sealed the deal.”

“Ouch!” said MacTavish. _And I thought I had problems!_

He looked down at the table, unsure of what else he was supposed to say, embarrassed at this sudden and humiliating revelation just out of the blue, wondering why anyone would just openly admit to that. He shifted, acutely uncomfortable, and was rewarded with a stab of pain from the wound. 

The man shrugged, “It’s always better to know these things, I think, before the expenses rack up.” He sighed, looking pained.

MacTavish inwardly grimaced, and an awkward silence descended as he fought to find the most appropriate thing to say. “Still…” he said, eventually and tailed off weakly. 

He considered the parallels in their separate stories that had led them both to be alone in this place, so far from their origins, trying to move on after life had shit disaster all over them and felt a weird, flicker of satisfaction in their shared sufferings. He looked at the man, who had returned to rearranging the cups and sacks of packaged coffee to his satisfaction and whistling as he did so. He thought about his aching leg, the long nights before the sleep came and the dreams that followed, and wondered if he could ever be so sanguine about the whole experience.

The man shrugged. “You want a refill? Promise I’ll stop talking misery.”

MacTavish regarded him for a long moment. “Sure.” he said, and then, suddenly “I’m John.”

The man smiled at him “I’m Riley.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Riley hadn’t been in the front of the cafe when MacTavish arrived, but his disappointment was eased by the presence of the waitress: a buxom Black girl with artful, sweeping strokes of iridescent makeup framing her dark eyes, a velvet choker at her throat and two tiny skulls on chains dangling from her ears. Clearly, he realised, anyone wanting to work under the beady stares of the stuffed ravens, and the empty-socketed glare of the innumerable decorative animal skulls would have an inclination to the fashionably macabre as much as the owner did. He watched her walk away with his order, admiring the shape of her: the cinching of the ties of her apron at her back, drawing the shirt to taper with her body in pleasing concertinaing lines. He mentally filed the image away for later. 

A few moments later, Riley strode through the front door, fat hessian sacks of coffee beans hoisted under each arm. MacTavish had previously considered him unnaturally large for a man who spent his days behind a shop counter, but as he watched him haul the sacks along without any sign of strain, whistling as he went, he realised that perhaps there was a good reason for this. He considered, as he watched Riley’s broad shoulders disappear from view, how the ties of his apron tapered his shirt in the same way as the girl’s had done, and how funny it was that something so simple could flatter them both so well. 

He frowned and sighed, thinking back to the times when he’d been able to haul boxes of ammunition around and sprint across fields with all the accoutrements of war strapped to his body without a second thought. He had been laid up for just a few weeks, and all the brawn he’d won for his years of hard graft had just wasted away. He’d found his smallest shirt, a football strip old enough to be classed as vintage these days, a nostalgic reminder of his teenage years that he’d outgrown a few months into basic training, and was heart-broken to find it fitted as well as it used to. 

He brooded as he picked up the needle and began to poke angrily at the ball he’d been forming. The waitress hadn’t given him a backwards glance, and her lack of interest galled him. He had never been one for relationships, but he enjoyed the thrill of being desired, and had fallen easily into the casual, polyamorous web that surrounded the Regiment: dipping in and out of the regular groupies that descended on the Hereford bars to shag themselves senseless every weekend. He doubted he’d even get a second glance from them now as he limped along the street, clothes sagging around him. He frowned and stabbed harder, venting his frustration and nearly spearing his finger in the process. 

“What’s this caper then?” 

MacTavish jerked out of his bitter reverie to find that Riley had appeared by the side of his table, regarding the fluff that MacTavish scattered over it with curious interest. 

“Creative stabbing” replied MacTavish disdainfully “You take the wool…” He held out the partially formed ball he was currently working on “....And you stab it. Repeatedly. Apparently, you can make stuff out of it eventually, when it’s been stabbed enough.” 

Riley set down MacTavish’s coffee, picked up one of the finished balls in his hand and rolled it around with raised eyebrows. 

“How’d you get into this then?”

MacTavish sighed “Couldn’t think of anything else fast enough.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the slim, spiral-bound volume that the psychologist had given him. He tapped the cover. “Part of the ten-step program for psychological and physical rehabilitation of recovering service personnel.” 

Riley held his hand out, and MacTavish handed it over. “Making pompoms?” he asked, as he flicked through it. “Oh. I guess this is ‘Step Three: Commence a practical and creative hobby’?”

“Exactly. If you hadn’t already got something suitable thought up, which I obviously didn’t, then you get one allocated. So, now I’m needle-felting.” said MacTavish “It could have been worse, I suppose.” He considered.

“You can use the small gifts to begin conversations with friends and relatives.” Riley murmured, as he read, aloud. MacTavish watched his eyes scan the rest of the paragraph, and then he shrugged. “Seems sensible enough. You start talking about… wool and you work up to the serious stuff. “Does it… help?”

MacTavish shrugged. “I’ve only just started. You’re supposed to make stuff to give to friends and family. Use it as a way of keeping in touch with people, something like that.”

“What you doing with these, then?”

“Fuck knows! It’s just all I can make at the moment. There’s other stuff. Wee fat birds and that. I’m working up to something for my wee niece.”

He would have wanted to go on, but one of the other customers got Riley’s attention and he excused himself to get back to work. MacTavish watched him walk away, a little slick of envy in his chest. Riley moved his large frame through the small space of the shop with easy, smooth grace. _Like a dancer_ , he thought. He frowned, considering that if Riley could dance too, the boys back on base would find their female territory severely compromised. He tried not to think what would happen if he attempted to dance. He was getting stronger, there was no doubt about it, but his leg still ached from the short walk to the coffee shop. He didn’t even want to think about dancing. 

He went back to his felting. When he’d made the wool into a serviceable ball he had an idea. He paused, consulted his booklet of patterns and began to pull the fibres between his fingers, stretching and deforming the ball until it took on a new, irregular form.

Riley was busy now, working the coffee machine with fluid ease. MacTavish watched the slow trickle of customers rise into the mid-morning rush that Riley and the glamourous gothic waitress slowly chipped away at with a little disappointed pang. He had been looking forward to speaking to him again after their chat earlier in the week. Whilst he recovered from his overexertions that had led him to take refuge in the shop in the first place, he thought about what they’d said as they’d made small talk before the shop began to fill up. It had been the longest conversation he’d had with anyone for weeks. 

He didn’t know why it felt better to talk to Riley than to chase up his old mates. He guessed that talking to a stranger was something new, something that wasn’t attached to any bad memories, which is why he seemed more attractive. He had picked up his phone the night before, fully intending to make some progress rekindling old friendships, but when held it in his hand and scrolled to Skip’s number, but couldn’t bring himself to connect the call. He had no idea where to even start, and the idea of having to tiptoe round the yawning gap of the last few months gave him a churning feeling in his gut. He’d cancelled the call and thrown the phone down on the sofa, disgusted with his cowardice, but with an overwhelming relief.

He’d have to face them all at some point, he knew that. If he had any intention of getting back into shape, and back on base, he knew he would have to fortify himself and start patching things up with his old mates. He pushed it aside for the moment, and biting his lip with concentration, started to slowly and gently work tiny depressions into the felt, until the half an hour later, he placed on the table a tiny but perfectly formed little skull


	3. Chapter 3

MacTavish had few pretensions to nationalism, but he never disliked a fellow Scot at first sight. As a result, he had tolerated the unannounced appearance of a small woman with brown, freckled skin, a halo of silky black curls and a soft, Morningside accent, by his hospital bed when he would have told any other visitor, especially a psychologist, to fuck off. 

His naive family came and went, perpetually disappointed and distressed by his weakened state, the Official Secrets Act a chasm between them. Each visit strained the bond a little more, until eventually, they made their excuses and stayed home. Joceline, with the benefit of a security clearance high enough to read the redacted mission reports, had no such difficulty. She understood, professionally, that the road to recovery was long and filled with detours and setbacks, so her expectations were low, realistic and achievable, all qualities that MacTavish liked.

In addition, her simple, restrained joy at his tentative progress gave him hope where he had little. Her demure smile, in the way she spoke with keen, but carefully constrained enthusiasm about her research, told him that her apparently devout commitment to his recovery was real. With her gentle manner, and warm, but constrained expression, she became conflated with the various holy saints his mother had tacked around the bed in a sudden fit of Catholic passion; her demure expression became saturated with holy radiance. 

He agreed to be one of her guinea pigs, and venerated her image with diligent adherence to the physios instructions. He worked hard to make her happy, and as she clapped her hands and laughed with delight at the small, fat, felted bird he’d placed on the low table between them with a showman-like flourish, he felt a genuine glow of a job well done. 

“I’ve been making them all week for my wee niece. Got another half a dozen of them all packaged up ready for posting.” He said, proudly.

“Excellent!” She said, and beaming, she held it pinched between her thumb and forefinger, admiring its construction, before she placed it on the windowsill behind her, nesting in between the motley crew of ornaments that cluttered the space. He looked at them and noticed them in detail for the first time: a whittled owl, a small cross-stitch of the regimental insignia, a jar stuffed with tiny origami cranes and an alarmingly malformed candle caught his eye amongst the clutter. 

He felt a sudden, sour stab of jealousy. He had always known, deep down, that she was responsible for the other injured veterans hanging around, but seeing concrete evidence made it real. Other men were working their way through the same program that he was, and, he considered glumly, looking at the craftsmanship on show (syphilitic candles excluded) doing a lot better than him.

“Have you considered any of the other steps?” she enquired, gently. “We spoke last week about trying to get in touch with some of your old friends?”

MacTavish frowned guiltily at the floor, leaving the question hanging in the air. He’d gone all out with the felting in the hope that he could distract her and earn a reprieve from this. He had  _ tried _ , but every time he picked up the phone, it felt  _ wrong _ . He imagined the faces of his old mates when they saw him, like that of his family: filled with pity and edged with disgust.  _ He would call them later _ , he told himself, and then he found some other mundane task to fill his time: the felting, touching up the paint on the door, regrouting the kitchen tiling, until it was too late in the day, and then he put it off to the next, when the whole cycle of procrastination would begin anew. 

“I… I thought it was best to give it another fortnight, until I was more comfortable getting around, then I could do more...have more to talk about.” he said. He wanted to sound bright and breezy as he spoke, as if this was part of a grand plan. She looked at him, and her lips flexed a tiny fraction, changing her whole expression from warmth into sadness. They both knew he was lying. 

“You look like you’ve really come on, getting about.” she observed. “When I came to see you in hospital, you were just getting started.”

MacTavish grimaced. He remembered perching on the edge of his hospital bed, draped in a sad, backless gown, the indignity of his piss draining from him in a tube weighing on his mind, and then the shame of being handed a zimmer frame by two brusque physiotherapists. It had been the most humiliating moment of his life, right up until he actually tried to rise and walk, when it was surpassed tenfold. He needed to grip the frame with all his meagre strength, his wasted, flabby arms trembling with the effort, and only with the support of both of the physios could he totter a few haltering steps from the bed to collapse, sweating, into the armchair beside it. Furious at this, he’d brooded all afternoon until he decided, come Hell or high water, to get back to bed  _ himself _ , without the indignity of assistance. The most humiliating moment of his life then happened five minutes later, when the nurses found him swearing through gritted teeth on the floor, the wounded, weakened leg having given up his weight in a flood of agony after the first step.

The next day Joceline appeared for the first time. He’d spent the morning brooding, sulkily glaring at the zimmer frame, refusing to budge from his bed despite the gentle coaxing of the doctors and nurses. 

Shielded from his wrath by her accent, and by cloaking her words in the right amount of soft sympathy, he’d tolerated her, and so listened to what she’d come to say. At one point, she’d said  _ “The secret of getting ahead is getting started” _ and she’d smiled that demure half-smile, as if she was letting him in on a forbidden truth. She’d left shortly after, having deposited a sheaf of paperwork on the bedside table. He’d stewed angrily for fifteen minutes, the phrase spiralling round and round in his brain until it suddenly clarified, and he’d hoisted himself, pushed the wheedling, sneering voice of his paranoia out of his mind, grabbed the zimmer and began the agonising shuffle out of his room.

He realised that this was the place she’d meant to lead him to, the reminder that with those first humiliating, painful and tentative steps, he’d pushed passed his doubts and fears, and started down the long, stony path that had allowed him to leave the stick hanging on a hook in the hallway, and walk slowly, but unaided to the volunteer’s car that morning. He’d been so proud of himself. He’d still limped, and he’d needed to dope himself up to do it, but he’d done it nonetheless. 

The first step, all those weeks ago, had been punching down on those voices that told him he was weak, pathetic and would never get better, the same voices that told him how his friends had moved on, that no one wanted him and that everything was doomed to failure. He felt stupid at not seeing it before, at being held to ransom by his own eviscerated self-confidence. 

“Fine.” He snapped. “I’ll do it”

  
  
  


He left the office twenty minutes later, his mood decidedly sour. He’d stewed in his own shame and stupidity, not really listening to what Joceline said, just wanting it to be over. He needed to walk off the bitter, bilious anger that had built inside with the realisation that all that held him back was himself. The leg had started to ache again too, which served only to further irritate him. He needed to take more pills and he hated that. When she’d finally given him leave, he’d brusquely nodded, grabbed the sheet of suggestions, and stalked out, his wounded leg throbbing with each step. 

He limped along the corridor at speed, glowering at the walls as he hobbled by. He wondered what was worse, the humiliation of asking the desk-duty private to call the volunteers to drive him home, or sit staring at the wall in the foyer, until he could move freely again? He gritted his teeth and committed to knocking back some codeine and waiting the pain out, determined to salvage  _ something _ good from the visit when he heard a familiar, impossible sound. 

MacTavish knew him immediately. Even with his back turned, he could identify the cheerful cadence of his Estuary accent. He recognised the way that his auburn hair had been gradually shaved down from the crown of floppy hair, fading into the pale, freckled skin at the nape of his neck. He knew him even with his usual uniform, and macabre tattooing, covered by a well-worn, black, leather jacket that stretched from his broad shoulders down to his skinny jeans. 

The private manning the desk spotted MacTavish frozen and staring in the doorway, and noticing that he was no longer the sole focus of his attention, Riley glanced round.

“All right, mate?” he exclaimed, his face broadening into a cheerful grin of recognition.

Seeing him out of context, standing in the last place MacTavish expected to find him, triggered an unexpected surge in his chest, as if his heart reared up in fright and then bolted into a startled gallop. 

“What are you doing here?” MacTavish spluttered. 

Riley hefted the large cardboard box he held with both hands. “Coffee delivery. For the brass.” He dropped the box onto the front desk with a heavy thump that shook the mug full of pens, and passed a pocketbook to the private on duty for him to sign. “You back at work already then?” He asked, as he waited.

“Uh… no.” MacTavish fought his body’s urge to brace, tried to quell the churning anxiety that had suddenly swelled within him.  _ Shit _ . He thought about Joceline’s warnings of triggers and flashbacks, the possibility of unknown trauma to his psyche suddenly manifesting in unprovoked panic. He wished he’d taken just a moment to calm down before he’d stumbled into the room. He felt suddenly  _ charged _ , like he did as the clock ticked down to the moment he stepped out on a mission, teetering on the knife edge between excitement and fear.  _ Jesus Christ! Not now!  _ He exhaled slowly, holding the emptiness in his chest as he forced his pounding heart to slow. 

_ “ _ Not going to be back to my usual stuff for a few months, and then it’s not up to me!” He spoke with painted-on, breezy cheer, and grimaced internally, knowing that he sounded unhinged.

He figured that the surprise of seeing Riley out of context had sparked a now dormant part of his combat brain; the shock of seeing him here triggering some sort of mis-wired threat response. Except that he usually didn’t  _ feel _ anything when he was on a job, and that shift into activity from laying up was, at best, like shifting out of neutral and into gear, even under fire. Instead, he felt like a pot that had been slowly heating, the waters swirling faster and faster until it peaked at a steady boil, churning and bubbling within. He realised that he was genuinely overheating, a flushing warmth moving across his skin. 

“Well, you’re walking better.” Riley observed “Spotted you passing up the road through the shop window yesterday making a good turn of speed.”

MacTavish felt a little spark of joy knowing that Riley had considered him worthy of note even when he wasn’t a paying customer at that exact moment. This pushed the heat into his face, and he knew without even looking at his reflection in the glass-fronted cabinet behind the desk that his face had taken on the same ruddy hue as it did when he exerted himself. He hated that. 

“Yeah. I…” He swallowed dryly.  _ “ ... _ took your advice on the swimming. Nearly killed me the first time!” He admitted, with a nervous laugh that he hated the moment he heard it leave his lips “Barely managed twenty lengths.” He shook his head. “But, I can do nearly eighty now; although it does take forever.” 

“Glad to have been of use.” Riley said, cheerfully, apparently either oblivious or too polite to comment on the change in MacTavish’s naturally pale complexion. He took the pocket-book back from the private, said his thanks and turned back round to face him. “You want a lift back into town?”

_No!_ His conscience sounded through the swirling anxiety with the clarity of a freshly struck bell. _Walking to the bus stop is supposed to be a test of your independence!_ It harangued. _And_ _perhaps_ , it suggested, _if you panic something as basic as this, maybe it would be a good idea to make your own way home?_

He agreed, fundamentally, with all of this, knew he should politely decline and head out to the bus stop, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he found himself saying “Aye. That would be great.”


	4. Chapter 4

Outside, MacTavish inhaled, filling his chest with cool, spring air. The earthy tang, humid and heavy, swept away the stale, anoxic, indoor fug. The surge of adrenaline began to ebb away, the heat in his face receding as it washed out of his system, and he felt better.

Riley’s transport, an ancient Ford Fiesta van, the sort MacTavish remembered from when he was young, but dolled up in the black livery of the coffee shop, stood parked at the side of the road. MacTavish grimaced as he swung down into the cramped space of the passenger seat, his leg protesting at the awkward, unpractised movement. The van rocked on its suspension beneath him as the weight of Riley balanced the other side and suddenly they were pressed close in the cramped, quiet space. 

He felt it again, the acceleration of his heart: a surging lift, like a plane teetering on the brink of takeoff, straining at the gravity tethering it to the ground. He closed his eyes, turning his face to look out of the window to hide his discomfort. 

_ What the fuck is wrong with you? _

He felt  _ weird _ . 

He concentrated, mentally running through the exercises Jocelene had taught him in case of panic, that he’d sworn he’d never need. He didn’t understand. He’d sat for three hours in a car with a chatty volunteer on the way back from the hospital, the leg aching and his head throbbing from the endless small talk, but he hadn’t felt like this. 

He took a slow, deep breath, spreading the inhalation over a long count of ten until his lungs strained in his chest. A pleasant aroma distracted him, tickling his nose, too fine and delicate to be the car itself, and he realised that it was Riley. The scent he wore filled the air between them, fresh and clean, with a herbal, lemony base and a hint of spice on top. He breathed out, the same long, slow count of ten and his mind began to wander, but the thrumming tension didn’t fade.

The delicate scent was pleasant, too light for his own tastes, and he imagined it in a bottle like a woman’s perfume, with a gold filigree that caught the light, an amber liquid swirling beneath the glass. He thought of himself, with his own cologne in his hand, remembering how good he’d looked in the mirror before all of this, but the image slipped through his fingers like sand, shifting and becoming Riley, the delicate glass bottle in one hand, the other running perfume-laced fingers across his jaw, sweeping across the brush of dark-red bristle.

The sudden touch made his whole body spasm. His wounded leg screamed as the muscles unexpectedly jerked, and he grunted with the spike of pain. Riley’s fist had brushed the edge of his knee as he grasped the gearstick, and the wobble as he shifted it into neutral had battered his knuckles against MacTavish’s knee. 

“Sorry mate! Bit bigger in here when it’s just myself.” He grinned apologetically, and MacTavish gave him an acknowledging grunt. “You can tell I’m not a car buff buying this old girl, but she gets the job done.”

MacTavish shuffled sideways in the seat, ignoring the protestation from his leg, and gave Riley some space to shift gears. His hands were pale against the dark leather of his jacket, the knuckles tight around the stick. MacTavish watched an edge of brushed silver become a sleek, elegant wristwatch as he moved, the tiny diamonds flashing on the dark face. He knew without even seeing the branding that it was expensive. 

“Where to then, squire?” Riley asked. 

MacTavish looked up, stiffening his whole frame to keep from looking away as he caught Riley’s eye. This close, in this tight space, it made him feel uncomfortable.  _ What the fuck is wrong with you? _ He steadied himself. “Oh… if you’re just going back to the shop, I can walk the rest of the way. It’s all good practice.” 

“Fair enough.”

They sat in silence as they headed back along the road to the gate.  _ Is this what a panic attack feels like? _ He asked himself. His whole body thrummed with  _ something _ , but it didn’t feel like fear. He had felt it before, but the memories he reached for slipped out of his grasp like wiggling fish.  _ Panic attacks don’t feel nice. _ He told himself, but it didn’t make him feel any better. 

He came back to reality as Riley braked, and realised that he’d been staring out the window in silence, not even noticing that they’d been waved through the gates and stopped at the main road, waiting for a gap in the traffic. He shook himself.

“You do a lot of deliveries?” he asked. 

“Oh, it’s picking up. If it’s in the county, I’ll drive it out myself. Quite like getting to know the place a bit better and you get to meet people, leave samples with potential customers... that sort of thing. I got to delivering out here because some bloke saw me dropping off a box at the golf course.”

“Aye.” said MacTavish. He could see the appeal. Even in the dull, drizzle-soaked morning, the verdant fields and woods of the Hereford countryside were pleasant, and he could understand why, after the dull, claustrophobic press of central London, it had appealed to Riley as a place of refuge, and then as somewhere to start afresh. He thought of how glorious it had looked the morning he’d arrived, fresh-faced, all those months ago.

He watched the hedgerows turn to rows of houses, and then they entered the town proper. He remembered something that had wondered after their first conversation, when Riley had given his own potted history, and they’d talked, or rather, Riley had talked, about the business. “So… what got you interested in coffee in the first place?” he asked.

“Cut my teeth on a desk that traded a lot of Far East futures stuff, so I started at midnight, and that pretty much made caffeination mandatory. The guy at the desk next to me used to bring in some nice stuff he bought special, and then I started trying different brands, mixing them up and just fell further and further down the production line rabbit hole until I was roasting and grinding my own in my kitchen at the weekends.”

MacTavish laughed. He looked at Riley, thinking about the florid, skeletal tattoos concealed beneath his jacket. “I just can’t see you shouting “Buy! Buy!” and “Sell! Sell!””

Riley smiled sadly. “No one does that anymore, mate. It’s all algorithms now. Got a desk and a screen, and the computer does all that work for you.”

“Oh.” said MacTavish, disappointed. “Is that why you jacked it in?”

“Nah. I’d just not been feeling right for a while, and then -you’re gonna laugh at this- I was moping one night after the split, so my sister cracked open some wine, put the telly on and we started watching Pretty Woman.”

“Oh aye.” MacTavish frowned. “That’s got… what’s her name? Julia Roberts in it. She’s a hooker? With…. uh…”

“Richard Gere.” said Riley.

“Aye that’s the one.”

“Right. Well. He plays this liquidator.” He shifted gear, and with his hand off the wheel, he gesticulated as he explained, the long fingers of his open hand sweeping close to MacTavish in the narrow space between them. “You know: asset strips the companies he buys to make more money? Then at the end, after he’s fallen in love with her, he decides that he wants to actually manage one of the companies, wants to be part of making something instead of tearing it up.”

MacTavish grunted encouragingly to conceal his confusion, failing to see where this was headed. 

“Now, I was quite drunk by that point...” Riley continued. “...but it stuck with me, and I realised that I was sick of just making money from… nothing.”

MacTavish considered the elegant watch, the expensive cologne and the tailored cut of Riley’s jacket. “Making money from nothing sounds pretty good to me.”

Riley waved his hand dismissively “Not like out of thin air, but like… I just thought I could die right? Get hit by a bus tomorrow and what would I leave behind? A few extra points on the fund? An empty chair in a cubicle? I took a week off and signed up for a meditation retreat just a couple of miles outside of here. Two weeks later I agreed to voluntary redundancy and then I was out of the City for good.”

MacTavish snorted with laughter, but Riley didn't seem to mind.

“I know, right?” Riley grinned. “Proper mid-life crisis shit. Normal people just buy a sports car. But, here we are. I came out here, into the country, and just… didn’t want to leave. Fresh start, away from all the bad memories”

MacTavish glanced at Riley, who was watching the road ahead. With the opportunity of this distraction, he took a long look, fixing the image in his mind before he looked away. He was good-looking, certainly, MacTavish considered. He liked his own face, but he knew that Riley’s straight, well-proportioned nose gave him a better balance than his own, complimented his full, pale lips and made him classically handsome. The image of Riley in the mirror swirling in his mind’s eye, and that feeling he couldn't place rose like a swelling tide as he wondered how far up those tattoos went across the pale, freckled skin.

_Christ!_ _There’s no hope for the rest of us_. He thought, irritated. _If a bird dumps a guy like that for his mate? She must have been fucking blind,_ _or_ _he must have been a fucking model._

  
  
  
  
  


“So this is where the magic happens?” 

MacTavish had assumed that the shop ended behind the counter, and was surprised to find that it continued into an airy space that took up half the yard at the back. Whatever its original purpose, it had been renovated to create a tiny factory: smooth, dark, stone workbenches filled with various pieces of oddly-shaped equipment stretched along one wall, cupboards fronted with gothically arched panels beneath, clearly the guts of an old church, repainted and repurposed for the worship of coffee. In the centre of the room there stood a large rectangular table, covered with scattered shipping labels and unused coffee bags.

Riley dumped his keys on a desk in the corner where a PC fought for territory with bundles of paperwork, and a bizarre, two-headed monster of a teddy-bear. As he washed his hands in the sink at the end of the counter, MacTavish shoved his hands deep into his pockets and inhaled the rich aroma of fresh-roasted coffee, enjoying the powerful storm of dark, sweet caramels, bitter-edge, dark cocoa flashes and edges of something that he reminded him faintly of  _ petrol? _ The smell of roasted coffee permeated every part of the room, obliterating the fine scent of Riley that had been so powerful in the car. 

“Oh yeah.” Riley grinned at him. “This is the big roaster.” He slapped a stout machine on a counter. “She can cook up about five kilos a time. Keep her running three afternoons a week now that business is steady. This is a mini version for doing little experiments.” He pointed to a smaller machine that sat further along the workspace. “Here.”

A small, half-pound hessian sack hit MacTavish in the chest. He fumbled and caught it just before it slipped from his grasp.

“Go on. Stick your nose in.”

He did as he was told, and an aromatic punch of smoke and treacle filled his nose.

“Aye. That’s lovely.” he said, sniffing again.

“That’s a Nicuraguan batch I bought last week, I thought I’d do a  _ really _ dark roast with it, really push it, you know? Thought it turned out okay, so I’m going to grind it up as a special for the shop.” 

MacTavish gave a low whistle, taking in the grinder, the scales and the paperwork. “You do all this yourself?” He asked. He’d known when Riley had talked some animatedly of the coffee roasting that he’d been part of that manufacturing process, but he hadn’t realised the industrial scale of the operation. 

He shrugged. “Still do most of the roasting myself at the moment, but the rest of the staff are rostered in for the packing and shipping, which helps. Ef’s getting started though, I think she might have a good nose for it. Takes me back...” He paused, gazing at the roasting machine with wistful nostalgia. “Just thinking about the days when I was just dicking about with a frying pan and some beans.” He shook his head, smiling.”

“Boss?” 

MacTavish turned at the voice and was pleased to see the waitress he’d seen in the shop the last time standing in the doorway. She had braided her hair into two thick pleats, each pierced with a long line of silver hoops from which little charms dangled, but her darked-edged iridescent powdered eyes were the same.

“Speak of the devil!” said Riley. “You remember John, Ef?”

She looked at MacTavish and inclined her head, fixing him with a curious gaze, her dark, black-rimmed eyes steady on his face for a long moment before they flicked sidelong to Riley and back. She appraised MacTavish with a surprised expression, and then moved on. 

“I remember.” She said, her voice demonstrating no real interest in his reappearance. She turned back to Riley. “A man came round.”

“Ooh! Was he handsome?” He looked at her with pointedly raised eyebrows, his expression suddenly comedically saucey, his voice rising into florid Cockney camp.

She laughed. “Lush! If you’re like, really into tweed?” She rolled her eyes sarcastically. From the nasal twang at the edge of her voice, MacTavish knew her then as a local. “Said he was from Longworth Grange.” she held out a business card between her fingers, and Riley took it. 

“That’s the posh place, innit?” he said, examining the card “ _ Boutique spa retreat.. _ ." He read aloud. "What he’d want?”

“Coffee. Like,  _ wholesale _ . Five kilos. There’s only eight two-fifty bags left, so I said you’d call him back, but I gave him an order pack, and samples. He wants it for Saturday.”

“Cheers, babe! I’ll call him later.”

She looked at MacTavish again: a long, cool, appraising glance, and then gave Riley an odd look before she turned and headed back along the passage. MacTavish watched her retreat, admiring the tone of her calves until she disappeared, trying not to feel too crushed by her lack of interest. He made a mental note to return when he had his full strength back, that old football strip straining around his biceps.  _ That would show her. _

“Longworth Grange!” Riley tapped the business card against his lips, the sharp edge creasing the skin. “About two hundred and fifty quid a night if I remember. Fancy restaurant. Does weddings...” He trailed off, staring into the distance and then shook himself, suddenly cheerful. “I know you shouldn’t count your chickens, but I think this calls for a very small celebration.”

He spun, deftly opening the fridge in a single, cat-like pounce and had picked out a half-full jug of coffee before MacTavish could open his mouth to decline “Now this is new. Brazilian arabica. Organic, fair trade. Leave it to steep for a day and night and it’s as smooth as silk.” He dropped ice into two glass mugs and then added a generous measure of coffee. 

“Coffee… with ice? Cold coffee?” asked MacTavish, incredulously.

“No. No.” Riley waved his hand dismissively. “ _ Iced _ coffee is when you make the coffee, cool it down and stuff all sorts of crap in with it. This is  _ cold-brewed _ . You just leave it in the fridge overnight, and voila!”

MacTavish gingerly took a sip, expecting to be disgusted, and was surprised to find that exactly as Riley had described, the ice-cold coffee tasted bright and smooth, with no trace of the bitterness he expected.

“Wow”

“Yeah. I had some stuff in from Honduras before, which was good, but this is way better. That long time brewing just gets rid of all that bitter stuff. Really brings out the flavour.” 

Riley slid a plate across the table. A sliver of dark chocolate cake, with a thin trim of satin icing had been placed upon it, along with a fork. 

“You make this yourself too?” 

Riley laughed “Buy it in from a bakery up in Bromyard, along with the bread and the other stuff in the morning.” He cut another slice for himself with a deft movement of the knife and pulled up a stool to sit down. 

“Wonder how Wales got on?” he murmured as he cleaved a piece of cake and stabbed it with the fork. MacTavish looked up, recognising the question for what it was and followed Riley’s distracted gaze to the clock by the roaster.

“Oh. You follow the rugby?” He asked. He felt the edge of that feeling again, the one that he couldn’t quite put a name to, rise within him, a tickle at his heart that made him smile without thinking. 

“Yeah. Took Saturday off so that I could watch England play Tonga.”

“You got folks coming round for it?” MacTavish asked.

“No. Just me and a beer.” 

“That’s no fun!” Exclaimed MacTavish. He spoke without thinking, the words pushed out in a rush before his brain could stop them. “They’ll have it on in The Albion. We could go watch it there.”

“ _ You _ want to go and watch  _ England _ play?” said Riley, incredulously.

“I didn’t say I wanted them to win.” 

Riley laughed, and then he smiled. “Yeah all right, then. It’s a date.”


	5. Chapter 5

The sun streamed in through a crack in the curtains, slicing across his eyes as the fabric swayed in the gentle draft. MacTavish winced and rolled over, burying his face in the pillow until the flashing phantoms of colour faded. His head throbbed, and he groaned. Mentally, he groped unsteadily through the fog, but it felt like the inside of his skull was lined with spikes. Finally he dragged himself into full consciousness, opened his eyes and all the horror of the night before hit him at once.

  
  
“I can’t get over how good you’re looking. I just can’t!” Skip held him at arm’s length, both of his large hands gripping MacTavish’s shoulders, and regarded him with a joyful disbelief. He shook his head, laughed, and then embraced him again, a crushing squeeze of genuine joy.

“Thanks!” MacTavish grunted, as all the air was forced from his lungs by the sudden, powerful hug.

Skip let go and sat back down. “I mean, not like in a weird way, like. I mean like, you look well. Does he not look well?” 

The others around the table grunted and murmured acknowledgement over their pints. There were five of them in total, all ex-Paras he’d known from his younger days, veterans of the ennui that suffused the cooling conflict around Belfast, who'd looked to a career in Special Forces to finally find the promised foreign travel, excitement and violence that the recruiters had spoken of so tantalisingly. They’d made it through selection in dribs and drabs, meeting up on the other side and looking out for one another: Skip, Towbar, Nigel and Blossom. MacTavish was the last, and most recent graduate, who'd been whisked away almost as soon as his new beret had touched his head. They'd had one celebratory BBQ in Nigel’s back garden and then he’d been immediately deployed. He hadn’t seen any of them for nine months. 

He’d known Skip the longest, since they’d taken the same coach south to Catterick: a wiry, square-jawed, White man with fine blonde hair close-cropped to his head, a thousand year souvenir of the Vikings sailing up the Firth, he joked. He told filthy stories at twice the speed he needed to, in a high-pitched, staccatoed, Fife accent, the punchlines emphasised with his booming, contagious laugh. MacTavish had taken to him immediately and they’d been friends ever since. Towbar and Blossom had gravitated into their orbit in the first week and Nigel had come into the fold shortly after. It was rare for them to all be in the same place now, spread across different troops, on and off deployments and juggling their own complex personal lives. MacTavish considered that they were all in the one place to be a blessing. It felt like old times, and he was glad. 

“It was only a wee bit of shrapnel.” he replied, waving his hand dismissively. The fact that it had shattered the bone beyond the capacity of the field medics to fix, he put to one side, the morphine-addled hallucinations as he awaited extraction, and the horrifying delierum of the inevitable infection he avoided altogether. Skip nodded, but he gave MacTavish a long, appraising look that suggested he could see through that lie, but he would let it pass and didn’t press him. Instead, they settled into a comfortable evening, bringing him up to speed with the news he’d missed on his enforced absence, and plying him with a regular supply of beer. He felt ashamed at how long it had taken him to get in touch with them, now that he was finally here, enjoying himself more than he had in months. 

After he left Riley to fire up the roaster and get to work, nicely buzzed on caffeine and sugar, the relief of the painkillers taking the edge off the ache in his leg, MacTavish turned south past the cathedral and towards the river, just taking a gentle stroll for the simple pleasure of doing so. He caught sight of himself in a shop window, and noticed, with horror, the state of his hair. It had been growing long even before he’d deployed but after several months of neglect it curled around his ears in a greasy mop. It hadn’t bothered him before, but seeing in the bright daylight, he was appalled. 

_ It’ll never do to go on a date like this! _ He thought, and then smiled, shaking his head at his mistake, but even as he laughed at his error, he felt the feeling again, the one he couldn’t name: a thrum of electric current over his skin, like a key had turned somewhere in his body and was twisting, trying to achieve ignition. He shook himself, and the feeling faded as soon as it began, leaving him unsettled. 

Nevertheless, the image of himself: scraggly hair, ill-fitting clothes with yesterday’s beard still unshaven from his face, next to Riley: immaculately groomed, clean shaven and with the solid physique of a job with plenty heavy lifting under his well-cut clothes, made him pause. He knew that given the choice, only a blind woman would choose him over Riley, and this gave MacTavish motivation enough to swing into the barbers in an attempt to improve his odds. He’d flirted with the idea of something new, eyeballing the selection of artistic fades and mohawks with interest, before copping out and ordering the same standard crew-cut he always did. 

It had been so easy, as he sat by the river and felt the cool breeze caress the newly shorn skin of his neck, enjoying the play of the afternoon light on the dark waters, the faint warmth of the sun on his face, distracted by wondering what Riley would think of his new haircut when they next met, to just do it: pull out his phone and finally send the text he’d been agonising over for weeks and he was glad. Sitting in the warmth of the pub, sandwiched between Towbar and Nigel, the press of them close like an embrace, he felt like he’d come home. 

  
  
  


About an hour later, as the third pint seeped into his system and gave the world a pleasantly fuzzy edge, Nigel nudged him conspiratorially, and with a sly, mischievous grin on his lips said “It’s your boyfriend.”

MacTavish paused, and frowned at him, presuming he'd misheard over the buzz of conversation around them. Nigel was the youngest of the bunch, having upped sticks from North London as soon as he came of age and run off to join the Army. He’d been snapped up by excited recruiters who recognised the value of adopting the trilingual offspring of a Somali immigrants looking for a sharp exit from looming retribution from a rival gang, only for the brass to ship him off to the only conflict on their books perpetuated by vaguely differently religious White people just over the Irish sea. He was funny, with a darkly intelligent sense of humour that occasionally strayed a little too far over the line of good taste. 

“I didn’t know you had a thing for redheads.” Nigel elaborated, indicating the far side of the room with a gesture of his pint. 

MacTavish looked round, his eyes scanning the room until he saw who Nigel referred to, and felt his breath catch in his throat. 

Riley was standing by the pool table at the far side of the bar. From this angle, MacTavish could see him in profile, nonchalantly taking a swig from a bottle of beer, leaning his weight onto a pool cue. The light suddenly seemed to constrict around him and the noise of the room dissipated, replaced by a high-pitched ringing as time slowed to a glacial creep.

He felt a pain in his ribs and jerked back into the world. He turned and spotted Nigel’s hand retreating from dispensing the sharp poke in the ribs that had dragged him back to the present. He glanced around, pretending that he had phased out over something else and had just noticed Riley for the first time. His heart had suddenly accelerated, each beat thumping on the inside of his ribs like it was trying to get out. He shook himself, and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He felt that blind panic rising, the same feeling that had come over him in the medical block, his brain suddenly sounding all the alarm klaxons without warning.  _ Christ! What is wrong with me? _ His stomach felt like he was falling, and for a moment, he was thinking about the first time he’d jumped, the horrible leap of faith from the bay of the droning plane and the mad panic as he entered freefall, thousands of feet from the ground.  _ Not again. Not now! _

“That guy?” He tipped his pint towards where Riley had been joined by Effua, who was leaning against the bar, trying to catch the attention of the staff. He concentrated, every effort focussed on dampening the tremor in his arm. 

Nigel and Blossom were staring at him, and he felt their scrutiny like a physical pressure on his skin. He needed to breathe, but it felt like all the air was slowly leaking out of the room.  _ Don’t fight it! Just take it slow. _ He thought of the last jump he’d made, the leap into the inky blackness of the Russian night, and how, after the hundred jumps before it, the idea of falling into the unknown had barely even registered as even a minor concern. He focussed on that, that almost bored feeling that had replaced the panic over time, willing his brain into realising that this was a false alarm. “The guy that runs the fancy coffee shop up the road from the flat?” He elaborated. He had to fight to keep his voice from trembling. “What of it?”

He mentally fumbled for the breathing exercises that Joecelyn had given him, berating himself for not reading up after the last attack. He needed fresh air, but if he left now, he couldn’t disguise it, everyone would  _ know _ . 

“Yeah. Spotted you two getting all cosy in his van outside the medical block” said Nigel, with a mischievous smirk.

MacTavish lifted his pint to his lips, and faked a long, nonplussed swig, just long enough to count through a cycle of deep breathing. He felt the sudden surge of adrenaline ebb a little as he inhaled and exhaled over a slow, internal count. His heart finally began to slow, shifting down from its mad gallop into a more easy canter.  _ What the fuck is wrong with me? _ He glanced round, furtively, searching for the trigger that had started the panic. The table was the same, the men around him unchanged. Around them the crowd was thin, it was too early in the week to attract the party crowd, and he had the feeling that the people around them were regulars clustered into little groups, oblivious to anything else that was going on. He could smell the tart vinegar of crisps further along the table, heard the chatter of the people around him. It didn’t make sense. 

“Aye. He gave me a lift back into town.” He said, dismissively. The memory of sitting close to Riley, the sweet, citrus tang of his cologne in the air did something, and that feeling inside changed. It was as if the memory had clarified it, like a lens. It wasn’t panic, or worry, it was tinged with something pleasant now, evolving into a sense of excitement. He felt on edge, but it felt  _ good _ . 

The rest of the men exchanged odd glances around him, and then, after a very pregnant pause Nigel said “Oh. Well. That’s… very... open minded of you.”

MacTavish frowned at him. He figured the normality of the coffee shop, the mundane, everyday calm of the place, that it had no links to the horrors of the past few months, that it had been his safe haven, gave his brain an anchor to weather the panicked false-alarm that had triggered in his mind, a point to hold him, and he was glad. Nigel’s objections suddenly irritated him. “What are you on about? That bus takes forever, of course I’d rather have a lift. He’s just delivering coffee, or does that offend your delicate tea-drinking sensibilities?” He snapped. 

Nigel regarded him curiously for a moment, taken aback by the sudden venom in MacTavish’s tone and then said “No... On account of him being… you know...  _ gay _ .” 

MacTavish’s brain stalled, his careful counting of the seconds as he tried to regain control of his heart’s startled bolt, slamming to a sudden, skidding halt. A very cold, ghostly sensation started at the nape of his neck, icy tendrils of frost creeping along his spine. “Making coffee doesn’t make you  _ gay _ .” he snapped.  _ Does it? _ The coffee shop was fancy, but it didn’t seem….  _ gay. _ He thought about it: the goat’s skulls, the stuffed ravens and the hourglasses. It was dramatic, gothic and a bit too avant-garde for his own tastes but he didn’t think that made it gay.  _ Or does it? _

“No...” Nigel frowned, and looked round furtively at the others, who had all stopped their separate conversations and swivelled to this new turn of events with amused interest, curious smiles on their lips “... but shagging blokes does.”

MacTavish stopped, pint halfway to his mouth. “And how do  _ you _ know he shags blokes?” he asked. He was about to continue, to suggest that such intimate knowledge could surely only be known by someone of similar orientation, possibly involved in the arrangement, as a scathing, if childish, put down, but Skip interrupted. 

“Aye, my Kelly-Ann says he’s gay.” he said, brightly. 

“And since when was she the font of all knowledge on this matter?” snapped MacTavish.

“We met him in the supermarket.” said Skip, oblivious to MacTavish’s irritation. He gestured with his pint glass towards where Riley had turned away from them, leaning with his back against the bar. “She went off to get something we’d forgot, like, and I carried on, but she never came back, so I went to find her and she was chatting away to him, all giggly as if they were best pals, like. So I’m like… eh? What the fuck?” because what’s she doing flirting with this guy? And she’s like, ‘He’s  _ gay _ .” He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion, presumably to mimic her actions as she had spoken. 

MacTavish opened his mouth, and closed it again, trying to figure out a way to sound like he wasn’t accusing Kelly-Ann of deception  _ per se _ but that maybe this required more corroborating evidence than her womanly intuition, then Skip swallowed his beer and went on. 

“Turns out, that coffee place is just down from where she goes for that hot yoga and-”

“Hot yoga? What’s hot yoga?” Interrupted Blossom. He was a broad-chested, thick-armed and hairy farmer’s son from somewhere in the deepest valleys of the Penine hills that none of them had ever heard of, where the prime form of entertainment during his childhood and adolescence had been wrestling beefy heifers into submission, and who had never set foot out of his home county until he signed up. He regarded every new experience, and since MacTavish had known him this had included such wonders as Pop Tarts, Anne Summers and the continuous provision of hot running water, with the same curious wonder, his soft face with the same impassive docility of the cows he’d grown up with. MacTavish knew from experience that like cows, his pudgy, gentle face, with skin the colour and consistency of pastry dough, and soft treacle-brown eyes, concealed a violent temper that boiled to the surface when he thought himself threatened.

“Oh. Like normal yoga…” Skip explained “...but they turn the heating up. Burns off all the fat, apparently. You sweat it all off, or something...”

“Does it  _ work _ ?” Blossom enquired, his tone curiously intrigued.

“Oh aye.” Skip stared into the dregs of his pint with a gloomy expression.

“You don’t sound too happy about that.” said Nigel.

“Och well.” Skip brooded into his pint “I liked her like she was, not a skelf with wee tattie scone tits. I said to her-”

“Sorry, what’s this got to do with anything?” MacTavish interrupted. 

Everyone glared at MacTavish for changing the subject, apparently more intrigued by the serious, and pressing matter of the benefits of heated yoga than the matter of who Riley took to bed with, but Skip continued “She and her pals go in there afterwards for a coffee and whatnot, like, so, she was saying he’s dead rich, used to be a banker, like, and he had a  _ man _ -posh name, began with a Z- They were engaged...”

The cold spread down MacTavish’s back as Skip continued. He knew that story, he’d heard Riley tell him himself, but now he frantically rummaged through his memories, MacTavish realised he’d not actually stipulated the gender of his so-called other half, and had subsequently never clarified the point.

“Engaged? To a  _ man? _ ” Blossom frowned, the cogs in his brain clearly whirring as he considered the concept. 

“Aye. Gay-engaged. Whatever. But….” Skip paused for dramatic effect, and everyone leaned close around the table “...He found his man was shagging his best mate.”

There was a collective indrawing of breath, and the group disintegrated into fractured, muttered conversations speculating on the nature of gay marriage, head-shaking solidarity against infidelity and, in Blossom’s case, whether the fat burning benefits of hot yoga were applicable to beef cattle. 

_ He had a man… Engaged... _

“Did you not know that?” said Nigel, his smirk showing his delight at showing up MacTavish’s ignorance. 

“Aye... Sort of…” MacTavish mumbled. “I knew he had a… another half. Just... I thought it was a bird.”

Around him, the table erupted in laughter. 

  
  
  


As the evening wore on, the events of the last few weeks stewed in his mind, basted in another pint and a whiskey chaser. Little things he hadn’t really taken much notice of before began to connect, but his thoughts were fuzzier with each passing minute as more alcohol seeped into his system. 

There was a sticker on the window of the coffee shop, he remembered, by the door: a multicolored rectangle with a heart in the middle.  _ Hereford Pride _ had been written in the middle of it, in an elegant cursive script. He’d seen them in a few shops, next to the Visa logo and the opening hours. He’d thought it was some activity trail thing, like when the council had installed the herd of painted cows in the summer to attract tourists, but now he saw it for what it was, remembering the day he’d been off duty in the centre of Belfast, the oh-shit moment of realising he was about to walk into a march, only instead of the whistles, drums and dour fury of the Orangemen, he’d been confronted with a wild, glitter-covered sea of bodies that had swarmed past him waving those same rainbow colours. 

He shook himself, trying to rationalise, remembering that lots of shops had them and they couldn’t  _ all _ be gay, but then more things bubbled to the surface of his mind and the icy feeling began to spread again in earnest. He thought about Riley’s carefully curated appearance: the effeminate scent he wore; the tailored, designer clothes and the way that when Effua had told him about the man who’d come in from the hotel, he’d asked if he was handsome in that high-pitched, camp way that made him sound like he was playing a part in a Carry-On film. MacTavish had just assumed he’d been joking about Effua’s judgement, but now he wondered if had he asked that question for his own ends? 

He felt sick, and with each passing moment, the tide of nausea crept a little higher. He should have stopped, he knew that now, should have realised that six months off the booze would have rendered him helpless against the onslaught of free pints, but he’d been so wound up in the moment, his thoughts slowing with each swallow, that he had just carried on letting the pleasant buzz slide into cloying fug that he had to force each confused thought through. He’d been too busy thinking about Riley, going back over and over the evidence that his memory presented him with, like he was plucking petals from a flower:  _ Gay. Not gay. Gay? _ He’d barely noticed that he’d knocked back a double measure of expensive, sipping whiskey in less than fifteen minutes. 

He’d had far too much by time he’d seen the little group reach for their coats and gather their bags. They’d been sitting there for an hour, laughing and joking: tthree of them: Riley, Effua and a young person of indeterminate race and gender who had shyly peered out at MacTavish through owlish spectacles beneath a mop of curly brown hair, to take his order. He’d watched them surreptitiously over his pint as much as he dared, his input into the conversation around him reduced to no more than a few encouraging noises as he watched them, his eye drawn back again and again to Riley. 

He groaned at the memory of the swelling nausea that had swirled in his gut as he stood up to follow Riley as he headed back, pushing through the early evening crowd to reach the bathrooms at the rear of the big public room. He’d steadied himself on the table, and fought the sudden need to sit back down as his head spun. He’d wanted, no,  _ needed _ to know. 

He’d concentrated on every step, but he still stumbled missing the step that led down to the bar when he reached out, intending to touch Riley on his arm to get his attention, but instead it had become a lurching grab. He saw it over and over again, as he passed the point of no return, his balance slipping away and his fingers closing tight on Riley’s shirt, the fabric twisting in his grip to become a stranglehold as he fought to keep his balance, the weight of him dragging on Riley’s arm. Of course, he hadn’t noticed it at the time, as his fuzzy brain fought to keep upright, but now he saw how it looked from the outside, seeing himself for the first time as a mad, hopeless drunk and the shame made him feel truly sick. 

Riley had turned, surprised. His brow had creased in bemusement as he recognised the literal hangers-on, and MacTavish saw the split in time there, the potential future where he said nothing, and Riley smiled at him, helped to prop him up with his free arm and maybe, just maybe he’d have had the window to apologise, get his bearings and stagger home to raise the question another day. But he’d carried on, the force of the words that had been swirling in his mind for pouring out of his mouth. 

“Are you  _ gay _ ?”

He’d said it wrong: the question rushing out in a lurching growl. He imagined how he must have looked: the noxious stench of beer and whiskey on his breath, words slurring together, the confused frown on his face and how it would have looked like anger. He’d seen Riley’s brain working, emotions passing over his face. The moment where the smiling confusion faded, the hurt and pain appearing. It made MacTavish groan with shame every time he thought about it. In reality, he had been a microexpression, only present in his face for a fraction of a second, but it felt like they stared at each other for hours, Riley’s wounded expression rising and falling away, replaced by a nebulous, dark and dangerous anger contorting his handsome face. It played over and over again in his mind, the moment that his expression sank, the friendly light in his face dimming as his brain processed MacTavish’s words. The moment stretched out, the white noise of the crowd falling away and then suddenly, snapped back without warning.

Riley wrenched MacTavish’s hand away, and glared at him, his mouth a grim, hard line. “What if I am?” He spat. He suddenly grew large, squaring up to MacTavish. “Is that a fucking problem?” he growled.

He could have cringed away, but he met the challenge on the blade, puffing out his chest and forcing his jaw out, his teeth clenched. MacTavish hadn’t expected this, but years of army life had conditioned him to solving problems with violence, and his response to Riley’s posturing, combative stance was reflexive. The fug of the alcohol sucked from his mind in an instant as a tidal wave of adrenaline focussed every cell of his body into battle stations. He hadn’t seen it at the time, but he understood it now and he winced at how  _ stupid _ it was, how they had suddenly been thrust into a feedback loop of aggression in the space of a few seconds, how neither of them was going to back down. 

He’d wanted, _intended_ , to say, that it didn’t matter if he was gay, but that he didn’t understand why he hadn’t told him, and that it was cool _so_ _cool, aye?_ Instead, he’d reacted to the defensive anger in kind, a sudden rage surging into his blood. He remembered thinking about the others laughing, being sudden butt of the joke, the idiot who didn’t know that Riley was gay. He saw how stupid he looked, and it _hurt_. 

“Making me look like a fucking  _ idiot _ .” he snapped. 

Bile rose in his through as he remembered. He wanted to claw the words back out of the air and shove them back into his mouth, to turn time back and just grab himself before he spoke, but he couldn’t. He could only replay the moment that Riley’s face fell, the brief flash of disappointment, the hollow sadness in eyes before they hardened.

“Fucking squaddies.” Riley spat, his tone filled with disgust. His fists had clenched, his whole body bristling as he glared at MacTavish. “I should have  _ known _ .” and in a sudden moment he shoved past, sending MacTavish stumbling into the wall, and stalked out.


	6. Chapter 6

MacTavish tried to avoid staring at the ceiling. A previous owner had tried to add some charm to the pokey room, attempting to scrape a fan-like pattern onto the artex, but instead of a chic, art deco motif, they’d created a choppy sea of malformed waves that resulted in an optical illusion of movement if you looked it at for too long. This, and the raging hangover, combined to make him queasier each time he looked up. Whenever he tried to ease himself into a sitting position, the room spun wildly around him and he had to flop back down as his stomach heaved. Eventually, after an hour of this, frustration got the better him and he lurched upright, stumbled into the bathroom, and threw up. 

The nausea disappeared instantly, leaving him with an acid-burned throat, a throbbing leg and an insatiable urge for coffee. Specifically, one of those cold coffees that Riley had pulled out of the fridge on the day before yesterday.  _ From named beans on a particular tree in Columbia, steeped in finest organic glacial meltwater, or something like that _ . He wasn’t sure. Whatever its origins, he just wanted to go back to that: to return to walking in the sunshine, looking forward to watching the rugby in the pub, and generally being happy with his lot. He wanted last night never to have happened.

He remembered that afterwards, he’d gone back to his friends at their table, and sat down wordlessly, his absence and return barely noticed. Another pint had been laid before him, and he stared at it, seething, hurt and confused by Riley’s sudden, inexplicable fury. 

He made excuses, tried to tell himself that Riley had lied to him, made him look like an idiot in front of his mates. He focussed on the moment where the table around him erupted in laughter at his ignorance, using that to paper over that nagging doubt at the back of his mind, trying to convince himself that  _ he _ wasn’t the problem, that he had been entirely within his rights to ask Riley if he was gay, and that he had no need to get so angry with him for just  _ asking _ . 

An old memory intruded: a pub in Belfast, the old REME guy propping up the bar, the stench of beer on his breath as he leant close, nudged MacTavish and slurred “What’s a bloody Fenian like you doing in the Paras?”

They hadn’t been briefed for the social nuances, the careful dance that all the strangers had to work through, the discrete showing of colours and affiliations so no one needed to overtly ask on which side of the line you stood. He hadn’t understood the coded nature of the questions, that it was never  _ just _ asking. He had just presumed that the mechanic had been making an idle, innocent enquiry, that perhaps he was familiar with Inverness. He hadn't fully appreciated that saying you had been to St Thomas Aquinas High School was a bit of a giveaway to your religious upbringing, and all the shit that went with it.

He remembered what that had felt like, the cold feeling that had started in the pit of his stomach as the conversation had died away around him. For a few seconds they had stared at one another, the hostility coalescing out of the air like invisible, choking gas. Then Nigel had piped up, squaring his shoulders and said “So what, bruv? You want to make something of it?” and suddenly the guy had somewhere else to be.

His self-righteous anger soured at the memory, and he felt the sudden press of crystallizing guilt in his soul. He knew he was lying to himself, that no matter how he tried, he couldn’t make it anything else than his own stupid fault. He remembered feeling like shit as he listened half-heartedly to the evolving conversation, offering in vague noises of agreement and forced chuckles when he felt it was needed, but inside spiralling slowly down into a dark depression. 

The memories became increasingly hazy until a black curtain came down, the alcohol overwhelming his mind. He had no memory of leaving the pub, saying goodbye to his friends or getting home. He had checked his phone for clues, and after much psyching himself up, peeked at his social media, but apparently either it hadn’t caught up with him yet, or he had done nothing to warrant any attention. 

A memory suddenly flared without warning. He saw the moment that Riley’s face changed, when he realised MacTavish’s betrayal. “ _ Fuck _ .” He said the word through clenched teeth, wincing as his stomach knotted. This had been happening on repeat since he'd woken up, a torrent of hot shame erupting as the sequence of images looped again and again and again. 

He pushed the memory away and shoved upright to shuffle through to the kitchen, his leg complaining at all the sudden movement after the long, horizontal morning. He found an unlabelled jar of what might have been instant in the back of the cupboard, the granules long compacted into a solid lump, but he wasn’t sure, when he put his nose to the rim, looking for that same rich aroma that filled the roasting factory, that it wasn’t actually Bisto. He figured it was best not to try to find out the hard way, and jettisoned the jar into the recycling bin with an angry grunt. He made himself some tea instead, flopped down on the sofa and sulked.

_ So, Riley… is gay _ . He considered this, and called up the image he had made of the ex-fiancée that had never existed: a lad’s mag pastiche of a woman that he’d invented a few weeks ago, a harlot with flaxen hair, perky tits and an evil streak in her honey-coloured eyes. He had thought about that a lot, the image coming unbidden to his mind in the quiet moments before sleep: Riley, and the woman astride him, her hands beneath the lapels of his suit, her lips pressed on his. He’d found it oddly arousing, the idea of seeing a malevolent seductress at work, and often, as a warm bath took the edge off his aching muscles, he thought about it for his own pleasure. 

He concentrated: shortened the hair into a shaggy curtain that brushed the collar of the exquisitely tailored suit which had sprung into existence around the newly angular body, sharpening the jaw a little, but keeping dark eyes, and their evil spark the same. He thought about this man  _ -Zane? Zachary? Zeb?- _ wrapping his hands around Riley’s neck, his fingers brushing the short fuzz there as he leaned close, a lock of golden hair falling across his face-

He stopped. He had spent so long thinking about this non-existent fiancée that she’d become part of his own fantasies. That part wasn’t so shocking, he considered, given that she was the ultimate pastiche of the rolling cast of beauties that lounged between the few words that the lad’s mags he liked would print. He figured that as he had imagined this man instead, running through the same loop as his female predecessor, his body just slipped into autopilot, triggering that same tingling pulse across his skin.

The idea suddenly intrigued him. He wondered if it would feel different, if it was another man?  _ If he had a beard, yeah _ . He considered this, and rubbed his hand over his own unshaven chin, the stubble scraping his fingertips, and winced: he didn't like that at all, but if he grew it longer, if he ran his hand across a face like Riley's, the short beard close-trimmed across the jaw, what would if feel like? And if the other man was wearing aftershave? He frowned, remembering the half hour of wandering through a department store, a birthday voucher burning a hole in his fourteen year old self's wallet, trying to settle on a scent that would make him suddenly irresistible, and all the awful reeks that he'd rejected until he'd settled on the same stuff half the other boys in his class wore and that he'd stuck with out of habit ever since. He considered the scent that had permeated the car, the sweet, lemony scent that Riley wore. He wouldn’t mind that so much, he thought, and his mind wandered, considering what it would be like, to press his lips to another man’s, that fine, expensive cologne filling his nose, the feel of soft bristle against his skin. 

He sat up, shocked. The slowly rising tide of arousal had been imperceptible until that moment. He shook himself, clearing his mind, and the turgid press of blood began to ease. He had been escaping into that stupid fantasy of Riley's non existent ex-girlfriend for too long, he knew that now, and he felt like an idiot. He heaved himself off the sofa, his leg grumbling with each movement and realised that he’d been staring, unseeing, at reruns of Peppa Pig for the last half an hour. He picked up the remote, and turned it off in disgust. 

"So, Riley's...  _ gay _ ." Saying it aloud, even in quiet of his own flat, made it that much more real. He still felt put out that he hadn’t brought it up before, that he hadn’t trusted MacTavish enough, but the comment about the squaddies had given him his answer. The openly queer soldiers were few and far between, and MacTavish had heard them spoken about with enough derision to understand why Riley had keep that part of himself hidden. 

_ Oh. Well. That’s… very... open minded of you. _ He heard Nigel’s words again in his own head, and a sudden flash of anxiety gripped his stomach, yanking it down.  _ Do they think I’m gay? _ He worried, and then dismissed the idea with a snorting laugh. They’d been taking girls home and bedding them on an almost weekly basis since they’d signed up, and now that MacTavish remembered, Towbar had walked drunkenly into his room on more than one occasion when he was  _ en flagrante _ . Besides, he recalled, they hadn’t been that bothered by it, not  _ really _ . They’d laughed at him, at his ignorance, which still riled him, but they had been quick to turn back to their normal conversations when their teasing had failed to get a rise out of him. 

In the kitchen again he pulled a frying pan out of the cupboard and set it on the hob.  _ So what if Riley’s gay? _ He looked back over the last few weeks, considering all the time they’d spent together, examining each encounter in light of this new information. He had enjoyed spending time in the coffee shop. He had liked talking to Riley. He had never felt threatened by him, never had the least inkling that he was looking for anything other than a friend.

Now he considered this MacTavish couldn’t help but feel a little offended. He knew he didn’t look his best, had probably never looked worse than the first time he’d limped into the shop, but surely he didn’t look  _ that _ bad? He considered his reflection in the glassy black door of the microwave, as he did so, a dissenting part of his mind spoke up:  _ You don’t expect every lassie you meet to fancy you? _ He frowned, considering this. He had never been friends, just friends, with a woman before. Sure, he worked with plenty of women on the base, and sometimes, they all drank together at the same table, in the same pub. He knew scraps about their lives, enough to strike up a conversation when he met them in passing, but he’d never spent time alone, just as a friend, with a woman before.  _ Being friends with a gay man... that would be like being friends with a woman _ ? He frowned. He suspected it would be more complicated than that. 

He sighed, confused. He’d had a lot to think about, and the aspirin he’d forced down earlier was starting to wear off. He wanted a coffee,  _ really _ wanted a coffee. 

He’d had a good thing going with Riley: he’d enjoyed his company, his passion for his little shop and his beans, his endless cheer. He’d admired his resilience in the face of his suffering, and it had given MacTavish comfort in the face of his own problems. He’d liked the man, been looking forward to a chilled out afternoon in The Albion, and then he’d fucked it up. He dropped two slices of bacon into the pan, the fat immediately crackling in the heat. A diffident realisation had been slowly taking shape in his mind, and now it was a looming presence. He knew what he had to do.


	7. Chapter 7

He found the roasting factory in darkness, but he knocked anyway. He leaned as close to the glass door as he could without it seeming obvious and tried to stare discretely beyond his reflection into the room, searching for signs of life. His stomach looped as he recognised the table where he’d joked with Riley, on which small bags of ready-to-sell ground coffee were now neatly stacked. Nothing moved within, but he waited. The van was parked in its space in the little yard, and Riley hadn’t been serving at the cafe when he’d nonchalantly staked the place out ten minutes before. He figured it was fifty-fifty whether he was in there somewhere.

The skin of his neck prickled, and he glanced round nervously. Years of combat training had left him with an intuitive sense of his own surroundings, alerting him to the presence of something out of place before his conscious brain had registered it, and it had saved his life more than once, but he couldn’t see anyone, or anything, unusual in the yard. Unnerved, he turned slowly back to the door, poking at a loose cobble with the toe of his shoe, but keeping one eye on the reflection of the yard, and one ear tuned for the sound of movement.

The sense of being watched didn’t help the churning anxiety in his guts. He knew apologising was the right thing to do, but that didn’t make the task any more bearable. An instructive post-prandial rest spent scrolling through the internet had left him feeling more and more despondent as he learned that if he had printed out a list titled “what not to do when you find out your friend is gay” and ticked off each bullet point as he went along, he could not have fucked up more thoroughly than he had done the night before. Eventually, the guilt had worn down his denial and he’d got up, pulled a piece of scrap paper out of the recycling bin, and went to find a pen. He remembered then, about the book. 

“ _ Becoming An Emotional Genius _ ?” 

Jocalene nodded, bathing him in the holy light of her beatific smile. “It’s step 7: Improving interpersonal relationships.” she explained, tapping the workbook on the table between them. 

“The managerial structure of the Armed Forces is unique in its level of authoritarianism, and its assumption of automatic obedience of anyone else of lower rank, but civilians, and “Other Agencies” have a more…” She turned her hands from the air-quotes gesture, showing her open palms, mixing the empty air whilst she searched for the right words “...collaborative approach.” 

“It’s one of the most common areas of friction, and a well-recognised factor in operational and failure. Learning how to improve your own understanding of how people tick will allow you to build more effective professional relationships, and that might save your life, and theirs, in the field.”

MacTavish nodded in agreement. “That seems reasonable.”

“That’s before you factor in the benefits to your personal relationships.” 

“ _Personal_ _relationships_?” He snorted derisively to cover the sudden, surging embarrassment at the word “I’m not bothered about getting a _girlfriend_. We’re away for months, lassies _hate_ that. It’s nothing but trouble.” 

It was more than that. After their years toiling under the yoke of military life, where every stray fart had to be approved by someone further up the chain of command, he, like many of his brothers-in-arms, considered the surrender of any more of themselves to be an affront to their remaining dignity. Most of the women that swarmed the Hereford pubs and clubs looking to subvert the physical endurance the Regiment required, using it for their own sordid pleasures, understood this, and as far as he was concerned, that worked out fine for everyone: give each other a once over in the pub, head back for a tumble in the sheets and then finish up with an exchange of thank-yous before never seeing them again. 

Those that expected something more? He knew from bitter experience that they just got hurt. The boys who exhausted the novelty of the perpetually regenerating groupie buffet, and craved some kind of love connection, went off on a half-year deployment and returned to find their solemnly-sworn, faithful girlfriend working her way through the smorgasbord of lusty young men left behind. As far as MacTavish was concerned, the whole sorry subject of relationships should be filed in the drawer marked “Avoid”.

A tiny frown appeared on Joceline’s face, the smallest of creases between her eyebrows changing her whole expression from one of saintly radiance to one of patiently endured suffering. He knew he had given the wrong answer. 

“Even accounting for the enforced long absences.” She countered “There’s more to these failing relationships than you might think, and this goes beyond who you take to bed.” He grimaced internally as she said that. Joceline’s holy saturation meant that any time she suggested something carnal, MacTavish felt like he was watching a dog piss on the baby Jesus in his manger. She didn’t seem to notice his discomfort, and ploughed on regardless. “ _ Friendships _ are stronger based on a well-built emotional connection.” 

He’d nodded begrudgingly just to get her to move on, but as soon as he got home, buried the book in the tower of magazines by the bed, where it had lurked, ignored, ever since, until he remembered the chapter entitled “Saying Sorry”.

It had taken thirty excruciating minutes to work his way through it, coming to terms with the repercussions of his stupidity in minute detail, followed by another sixty minutes of sulking regret as he ploughed through several aborted drafts until the carpet at his feet was littered with crumpled up scraps. Finally, with the assistance of some more aspirin and a gallon of tea, he finally had a workable script to commit to memory.

There was still no answer at the door, so he knocked again, more forcefully this time. Mentally he ran through his prepared speech, nausea rising as he ticked off the points the book had advised were the most important, but the distracting prickling at the nape of his neck kept growing. He turned again, his eyes searching the little yard and seeing nothing. Then a tiny movement in his peripheral vision drew his gaze up and he saw Riley glaring down at him from a balcony. 

The sight of him struck MacTavish like a hammer blow, all the carefully constructed words evaporating from his mind as Riley’s disgusted fury froze the air between them. 

_ Still angry then, _ he realised. It had been an outside chance that all would be forgiven in the sober light of the morning, or that Riley would be merely annoyed after sleeping on the experience, but from the look on his face, he was obviously still furious.  _ Shit _ .

“What do  _ you _ want?” Riley snapped.

MacTavish took a deep breath, and for a horrible moment could not speak. He stared: mute and gaping, until finally, the squirming anxiety in his guts hit a critical mass and all the words exploded out.

“I came to apologise.” he said.

Riley frowned, his head jerking back a fraction as he blinked in surprise. Whatever he had expected MacTavish to say, this had clearly not been it. 

“I was bang out of order last night.” MacTavish continued, trying to press home the advantage of Riley’s silence. He hadn’t been told to fuck off yet, and before he did, he wanted to get as much out as possible. “If you’d not told me about…” he swallowed nervously. He had practised, but he still felt a surge of anxiety when he came to saying “gay” that he knew would make him stumble, and he scrabbled for an alternative “...what you were like, then maybe there was a reason for that and it wasn’t right of me to try to get to you tell me. I don’t blame you for getting angry about it.”

Riley just stared at him, his throat bobbing as he swallowed, and MacTavish thought that perhaps his expression had softened a little bit: the harsh frown line between his eyebrows smoothing out. He still didn’t speak.

“Look, it’s not any of my business what you do with other people…. but when it got brought up, I thought surely that was something you would have mentioned…” He tailed off, his mind wandering briefly to the ex-fiancée he’d imagined before he jerked it back on track “I had this image of what you were like, and that wasn’t it… And I felt like an idiot for not knowing, that’s what I was annoyed about.”

MacTavish took a deep breath, and tried to control the tremor that threatened to erupt in his voice. This had been the hardest bit when he’d practiced in the mirror, the bit where he got to the crux of the matter, when talked about his  _ feelings _ , and it made the nausea of the morning rise all over again. “It’s meant a lot to me to have someone to talk to the last few weeks. Somewhere to go that’s nothing to do with my work, my fucked up leg and all the other shit…” He felt suddenly exposed in the cool of the afternoon, as if he was standing skylined on the top of a crest, snipers in the hills around him bearing down on him through their sights. His skin crawled as he continued. “... I like talking to you, and I don’t want that to end like this, with you thinking I had meant something I didn’t.” 

He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “So… I’m sorry”

When he opened them again, he saw that this time, Riley’s face had changed. The anger had been slowly falling away as MacTavish had suffered his way through his speech, and now he regarded MacTavish with a cool, unreadable stare. He watched as Riley’s chest heaved once, then twice before he turned and vanished inside. 

MacTavish, who had learnt enough about retreats in his military career to recognise that this was not one, waited, and after a few moments, there was a noise from inside, a box of light appearing in the gloom as a door opened and then, stalking like a ghost through the darkness, Riley appeared suddenly in the open doorway.

“All right.” he said, as he held open the door. “You can come in.”

  
  
  
  


MacTavish was shocked by the change in Riley’s appearance. He had always been immaculately turned out in well-fitting, stylish clothes, his hair artfully tousled and his beard smoothly trimmed, but today he answered the door in a stained, sleeveless white vest and a pair of worn, grey sweatpants. His greasy hair stuck to his forehead in clumps and his once bright eyes were sunken and dull.

He followed Riley meekly through the factory and into the passage leading to the cafe itself, a growing worry gnawing inside. Everyone had the right to slob out, he was in no position to criticise that, but there was something about Riley’s appearance that went beyond just relaxing and sat ill with MacTavish. He looked like he’d just given up. Something was wrong here, something had happened to Riley, and he had a horrible feeling that it was him. 

At the distant end of the passage he could hear the blast of the big coffee machine at the counter, and behind that, the faint chatter of voices. The familiar aroma of roasted coffee saturated the air he inhaled, and he felt his heart lift. He’d been compressing the fear of rejection as far down as he possibly could, and the relief of being allowed inside left him feeling light-headed. He staggered a little against the doorframe as he misjudged his movements, closed his eyes to steady himself and nearly rammed straight into Riley as he stopped and opened a door that MacTavish hadn’t noticed before, set into the wall of the passage. 

“You want a coffee?” Riley called back as he ascended the gloomy stair beyond. 

“Yes please” MacTavish replied, and, lacking any further instruction, began to follow cautiously behind. 

He came out into an unlit room, just in time to see the ghostly shape of Riley vanish into a doorway beyond, leaving MacTavish alone in the dark. He paused, not wanting to stumble ahead and crack his shin on something hidden in the shadows. Instead, he waited for his eyes to adjust. As he did, details became apparent in his surroundings. He realised that he was in a flat above the shop. 

Surprisingly, no lingering odour of roasted coffee penetrated the space; instead, he inhaled the faint, sweet scent of vanilla on the stuffy air. But when he concentrated, at the very end of his indrawn breath, he could just detect the very whisper of Riley’s cologne and then the understanding that he was standing in  _ Riley’s _ lounge, that he lived above the shop and he was standing in his flat, slammed into him like a careening truck.

The feeling started again. The odd feeling that he couldn’t put a name too, but that he was now fairly sure was not the start of the feared anxiety attacks or flashbacks he’d been warned about. He wasn’t  _ afraid _ , standing alone in the murky gloom of Riley’s lounge, he was….  _ excited _ ? He recognised it then, that Christmas Eve feeling of pure, exhilarating joy to come. That squirmy feeling in the pit of his belly that came with tinsel and fairylights and the unshakable belief that something good was waiting just beyond the horizon. 

_ What the fuck? _ Why did he get this feeling when Riley appeared?  _ Is it the coffee? _ He never had this problem with tea, and caffeine  _ was  _ a drug, after all, he worried.  _ Am I a junkie now? A coffee junkie? _ A looming shape against the wall next to him resolved into a sofa, so he sat down, just in case he was wrong and things took a turn for the worst. The leather felt butter-soft beneath his hands, and he fought the urge to leap back up because nothing that felt that good could be cheap. But he didn’t want to offend Riley further by refusing his hospitality, so he shifted to make himself comfortable, plumping the satin-covered cushions until they propped him up in a way that he liked, and waited.

The only light in the room came from a gap in the long curtains to his right. With a bit of mental gymnastics, he orientated himself and figured that behind them was the balcony where only a few minutes before, Riley had glared down at him. Where the light touched he could see the grey pattern of the rug at his feet resolve into its true colours: a design of interlocking triangles picked in twilight shades. Guilty, he kicked off his trainers and slid them under the coffee table in front of him. Just enough light bounced off the fancy gold-framed mirror on the wall opposite to allow him to see the display of tarot cards spread beneath the glass of the table:  _ The Lovers _ ,  _ Death _ ,  _ The Moon _ . He rolled his eyes at the predictably macabre images.

Glancing curiously around, he saw a sturdy, archival box on the opposite end of the sofa, the lid removed and the contents partially eviscerated onto the coffee table. The lid rested at the side closest to MacTavish, the tape that had secured it in place snarled into a big, sticky ball that hung off the corner like a malignant growth. Someone had scored out “Commodity Futures Risk Mitigation” and scrawled several obscene insults in emphatically printed letters. Beneath this, in a more careful hand, another someone had written “Do NOT open under ANY circumstances!”

In front of him a pile of photographs and paperwork had been scattered across the glass. He moved aside a small, velvet box, and picked up the photograph beneath it, turning it over in his hands.

A phrase had been neatly scribed on the back: _Anse Louis_ _‘07_. He flicked it over to see the image on the reverse. He recognised Riley immediately, even though he was only partially visible in profile, eyes closed. He had a peaceful, contented smile as he nuzzled into the neck of another man, the one who, judging from the angle, was holding the camera that had been used to freeze the tender moment in perpetuity. 

With a start, MacTavish realised that this was  _ him _ . 

Unlike the androgynous vision of MacTavish’s fevered imagination, the ex-fiancé had mousey hair sticking up in salt-stiffed clumps above a sharp widow’s peak. He was tanned, with the sheen of tropical heat on his sun-kissed skin. MacTavish’s eyes flicked over the sharp cheekbones, strong jaw and frowned, disgusted, at the trendy handlebar moustache and scraggly beard combination. He shook his head.  _ What a fucking wanker! _

“Is this him?” he asked, when the noises in the kitchen settled and Riley returned holding a cafetiere in one hand and a mug in the other.

“That’s  _ private _ !” Riley snapped, and, dumping the cafetiere down hard enough on the coffee table to slop the contents over the side, he snatched the photograph from MacTavish’s hand. He glowered, face flushed with indignant rage.

MacTavish paused, grabbing the anger that rose in response and shoved it back down. He didn’t want a repeat of the night before, at all costs “It was on the table.” he said, calmly, and nodded his head to the rest of the scattered pictures. 

Riley scowled at him for a few seconds more and then deflated with a very weary sigh. He lifted the box onto the floor and sat down heavily next to MacTavish. He held the photograph up between then and tapped at the man he had been snuggled into.

“That’s Xander all right.” he said.

This close MacTavish could smell the sharp, herbal odour of gin on Riley’s breath, strong enough to overpower the tantalising aroma of the fresh coffee in front of him. He realised that the weariness in his voice wasn’t exhaustion: he was clearly drunk. 

His brain caught up with his ears “ _ Xander _ ?”

“Yeah. He was American.” said Riley, by way of explanation. “Came over from the New York office on some temporary transatlantic experience program, but wanted to stay on account of me and took up in commodities as a strategist.”

He began to gather photographs into a pile. The two of them smiling, drinking through straws from the same coconut, in sharp suits on a balcony overlooking a grey London skyline, champagne flutes in hand. He paused at a half-length shot of Xander, fashionably scruffy with his shirt rolled up to his elbows and open at the neck, the patriotically-themed sleeve of eagles and flags inked onto his forearms out on display. MacTavish wrinkled his nose in disgust. 

He glanced over at Riley. With his full arms exposed, all of his tattoos were visible: the motif of dancing skeletons, the raven that disintegrated into feathers he knew, but, above this, reaching to the middle of one muscular bicep was an intricate death’s head moth surrounded by the phases of the moon that he’d never seen before. Around the images freckles speckled the skin like stars. He fought a curious urge to reach out and touch them. He had his own ink, and he’d stroked enough tattooed skin over the years to know would it would feel no different to the blank areas around it, but still the yearning urge to reach out and run his fingers over the skin was inexplicably hard to suppress.

He shook himself, and focussed, looking at the new photograph being held up for him to see: a picture of a much younger Riley, and another boy. Probably just out of school by the round, cheeks, smooth skin and lack of facial hair, MacTavish thought. A thin, multicoloured band formed of skinny glowsticks was balanced on his tousled, sweaty hair like a halo. As he grinned towards whoever was holding the camera, he pulled another boy close in a friendly embrace.The other boy had a round, clean-shaven face and a sallow tinge to his beige skin. He smiled groggily at the camera. A curl of dank, sweaty hair was plastered to his forehead and judging from his expansive pupils, he had been completely off his face.

“That’s Hadi.”

MacTavish took a moment to process this, and then remembered the circumstances under which Rileys engagement had imploded “Your... pal?”

“I’d known him since we was in the same year at LSE. He was a good laugh, and you know, up until…” he tailed off, and MacTavish nodded understanding “...until that, he was always…” He gestured with the photograph, and then tossed it onto the pile with a despondent flick of his hand. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing his fingertips into his eye sockets. He sat like this for just long enough for MacTavish to wonder, with rising horror, if he was going to start to cry, but then he shifted, dragging his hands down over his cheeks, distorting the skin until they slid off the edge of his jaw and he sighed, his whole body slumping.

MacTavish sat frozen, internally flailing, in the face of Riley’s obvious distress, desperately fighting the urge to jump up and flee down the stairs. The silence between them pressed down, oppressive and suffocating. He tried to think, trawling through what he remembered of Joceline’s workbook that morning and wishing he’d actually read it in the weeks it had been slowly composting in the pile of magazines. Finally, after desperately excavating almost forgotten memories he hit on something useful just as Riley twisted away and picked up the half-finished bottle of gin on the table beside him. 

He’d been through mandatory unarmed combat training just under nine months ago, the last useful thing he’d done before leaving the Paras for good. The weeks afterwards had been one long, intermittent brawl where everyone took to practising their newly acquired skills whenever possible. Any unsuspecting person who didn’t have proper grip on whatever they were holding found themselves relieved of their possessions with a well-executed disarm. The fact that Riley had already been working through the gin, and the slippery coating of condensation on the glass bottle gave MacTavish an advantage. In the split second that Riley reached with his other hand to pull the cork, MacTavish’s hand snaked out and Riley was left grasping the empty air.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He yelled, when his brain caught up. 

“It’s half-past three, you’ve not even opened the curtains and you’re drinking gin from the bottle.” snapped MacTavish, as he leapt up out of Riley’s reach.

“Give me that back!”

“No.” said MacTavish, firmly. He was appalled at how much he sounded like his mother, but the memory of her berating her teary sisters whenever they turned up at the door complaining about their mistreatment by their latest squeeze was the only useful experience he had to hand. “I’m your pal. I’m supposed to be looking out for you, not letting you drink yourself into oblivion over some hipster arsehole.”

“He’s  _ not _ a hipster arsehole!”

“Aye? Well he looks like a fucking hipster, and he broke your heart, so that makes him arsehole as far as I’m concerned!”

Riley stopped, as if MacTavish had reached over and slapped him. He stood gawping, slack-jawed like a drowning fish, and then, as MacTavish watched, his face contorted: his jaw clenching, and his eyes blinking rapidly as if he was having some sort of miniature seizure.  _ Oh no. Oh shit! Oh God, no! _ He realised that this time, Riley really was about to cry.

_ What would Mum do? _ He racked his brains, remembering the interminable clandestine meetings that had taken place around the kitchen table. Auntie Katie, the youngest, snivelling into her tea, and his mother clattering around the kitchen as she verbally laid into her sister about her poor life choices. Then, just as she’d run out of things to criticise, Auntie Shona would pipe up, except she would take a different tack, making soothing noises, and sweeping her weeping sister up in her arms. 

MacTavish swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He understood the balance of that routine, the good cop/bad cop act designed to get their victim turned around and moving in the right direction. Except, he didn’t have another person to play off, it was just him. He realised, with rising dread, that he’d backed himself into a corner, and the only way out was to change tack himself, away from aggressive confrontation and shift down into a softer gear.

He thought about all the stuff he’d read that morning, all the mistakes he’d made already. The awkward worry about touching Riley was crossing out just another on the list of avoidable fuckups, undoing all the hard work of his apology. 

He knew what he had to do. 

He inhaled deeply, and steeled himself, trying to staunch the breach through which the adrenaline flooded his system, to slow the thumping bassline of his racing heart as each beat pounded in his head, to quell the churning in his guts. He looked away, at the floor, as he put the bottle down on the coffee table and opened his arms, moving into a stance like he was preparing for an onrushing assault. “Come on.” he said. 

When nothing happened, he looked up and found Riley staring at him, a confused frown furrowing his warring features. MacTavish gestured, flapping his open arms as if encouraging an invisible congregation to stand. “Come  _ on. _ ” he repeated. 

Riley moved tentatively, unsure, across the gap that yawned between them and then suddenly, the space between MacTavish’s arms was filled with his body, his chest clasped and squeezed in a hug that would have crushed a smaller man. He had known that Riley was strong, but there was seeing this, and the reality crushing his ribs. His nose was filled with the sweet tang of his cologne. The soft bristle of his beard pressed against MacTavish’s neck. No one, bar the assortment of brusque physios, had touched him for months and the marvel of warm, soft skin against his own clenched around his heart like a fist, sending a wave of surging, adrenaline-soaked blood through his body. He had to clench his eyes to keep from swaying as the room spun around him. He tried to force his heart to slow, and had just managed to wrench his body under control again when Riley broke away, wiping his eyes on the heels of his hands, sniffling slightly as he inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. 

“I'm sorry" he whispered "I’m fine now.” 

They stared awkwardly at each other for a moment, MacTavish ashamed at the disappointment he felt at breaking contact. 

“How long has this been going on?” MacTavish asked, eventually. He figured that he owed Riley, and if he was going to make it up to him, he could at least take charge of sorting him out. 

“How long has what being going on?” Riley said, his voice still congested with aborted tears. 

“Sitting in the dark, getting drunk and moping over pictures of these arseholes.”

Riley sighed, his shoulders sagging. This time, he didn’t argue with the description. “Since yesterday.” he said.

MacTavish bit his lip, and wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole. It was one thing, he realised, to consider the damage he’d done as an abstract concept, but quite another to learn that he’d been the final crack in Riley’s emotional defences that had resulted in him surrendering into gin-soaked oblivion.

“I went out to that place: Longworth Grange.” 

MacTavish frowned, and then he remembered the appearance of Effua in the factory, proffering a business card in her long, dark fingers. “The hotel?”

“We talked about business, and then they did me a tour. Showed me the big marquee all set up, all the tables laid out, the chairs done up fancy, the big balls of roses, and all these curtains of fairy lights like stars, and it was beautiful… and I thought: that was going to be me.... I was going to be getting married next month. It just.... Just made it hit home.” 

_ Ah _ . MacTavish was ashamed at the relief he felt learning that he wasn’t entirely to blame for Riley’s meltdown, but he kept a serious face. “Aye, well. Would you rather be a fortune out of pocket and have had a nice party when you found out?”

“No.” Riley shook his head. “It’s not that. Just... I think I’m doing okay, but… it still hurts.”

MacTavish sighed. “Well, getting drunk on your own is not going to help that. Come on, let’s do what we said we were going to do. Game kicks off in an hour. Take your mind off all this for a bit.”

“I don’t know.” said Riley, uncertainly, screwing up his mouth as if he had bitten something sour.

“Come  _ on _ . This is not healthy. You need to get up, get a shower and get your arse out of this place and into… okay, well the pub isn’t fresh air, but it’s not moping about on your tod in the dark. Even  _ I  _ know that. Look, if you want to get pissed, forget your troubles for a day, at least let's do that together, eh?”

Riley looked at him, and for another horrified moment, MacTavish thought he was  _ really _ going to start crying this time. He began to wonder if he should just let him get it out, encourage it, like he did with the morning hangover vomit, but then, very slowly, like the sun peeking out after a storm, Riley smiled. 

“Yeah.” he said, and then more confidently. “Let’s do this.”

  
  
  



End file.
